Who Really Killed John Lennon?

Thirty years ago today, John Lennon was murdered by David Mark Chapman as Lennon and his wife walked outside of the Dakota Apartment building. Chapman, supposedly upset about a scribbled autograph that he received earlier, shot Lennon at point blank range. Thirty years later, when John Lennon would have been 70, we are still trying to Imagine a world with him in it. Their are conspiracies about the entire incident. Did Chapman act alone or was there more to the story? Here are five theories about what happened.

OK, Maybe It Was Mark David Chapman
This is the easiest theory of all. Mark David Chapman was a loon who took one of the rock world’s icons and killed him because he was upset about an autograph. The man didn’t even have the guts to look him in the face. He shot Lennon four times in the back. They guy had mental problems most of his life. At one time, he thought of himself as a god, commanding the “little people”. He attempted suicide and was a mental patient for Clinical Depression. He went to New York City with the express intention of killing John Lennon. Today, he sits in a cell at Attica Prison. He’s been denied parole 8 times.

The U.S. Government
While this may seem a little far-fetched, the U.S. Government had a long term love-hate relationship with John Lennon. There are many – including Lennon’s son, Sean – who feel that his father’s murder was at the command of the government. The reasoning is that John Lennon was a counter-culture revolutionary who could have commanded thousands, if not millions of people. Sean had told the New Yorker magazine, “He was dangerous to the government. If he had said, ‘Bomb the White House tomorrow’, there would have been 10,000 people who would have done it. These pacifist revolutionaries are historically killed by the government. Anybody who thinks that Mark Chapman [who shot Lennon outside his New York apartment in 1980] was just some crazy guy who killed my dad for his personal interests, is insane. Or very naive. Or hasn’t thought about it clearly. It was in the best interests of the United States to have my dad killed. Definitely. And, you know, that worked against them because, once he died, his powers grew . . . They didn’t get what they wanted.”

The Manchurian Candidate In The Rye
Right after Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon, he sat down and opened up a copy of the Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger. It is possible that Chapman happened to just be a loner enthusiastic about the character of Holden Caulfield. Then again, it could be something called “artificial model psychosis”. Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act state and testify that various Federal Agencies of the U.S. government (such as the CIA and the Pentagon), had a several decade-long covert research project to develop a technique or method by which an involuntary, unwitting innocent individual could be covertly manipulated to hallucinate that he or she must carry out the assassination of a preselected target. It is thought that the same type of thing was used on Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald. The tie in with The Catcher In The Rye is that Chapman was chanting, “John Lennon must die says the Catcher in the Rye.” Chapman was known to be obsessed with this book, but was he brainwashed into believing he should kill someone – like right out of the Manchurian Candidate?

The Second Gunman
What if Mark David Chapman didn’t kill John Lennon at all? One of the suspicions is that the author of the book Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon was actually the killer! According to the book Rethinking John Lennon’s Assassination: The FBI’s War On Rock Stars by Salvadore Astucia, author Robert Rosen conspired with former Air Force Secretary Hans Mark to set up the assassination of ex-Beatle John Lennon. Rosen’s assignment was apparently to run a spy ring in Lennon’s apartment before his death. Rosen allegedly recruited fake witness Sean Strub who implicated Mark David Chapman immediately after the murder. Also recruited in the spy ring was Fred Seaman, Lennon’s personal assistant.

Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Stephen King!
This is my favorite John Lennon conspiracy theory. Why would two presidents and Stephen King want to kill John Lennon? Well, the presidents, I understand, but Stephen King??? According to LennonMurderTruth.com, King was the real murderer! According to this site, different news magazines posted coded messages to the assassination of Lennon weeks and months prior to the killing. According to this web site, the picture taken hours earlier is of Stephen King getting an autograph from Lennon and not Chapman. Chapman was just a fall guy for the actual crime. King did the murder on the orders of the government. Crazy? I think it is, too, but how could I pass up this theory?